The chain from punch to ledger
Payroll is the clearest example of what an ERP is for, because the same information passes through four departments and traditionally gets re-typed at each handover.
- A device or app records a check-in and check-out.
- Attendance is derived from those, against a shift, with late marks and overtime by your own rules.
- Leave applications approved in the same system reduce the balance and mark the day correctly.
- Payroll processing turns days present, leave and overtime into gross pay.
- Statutory deductions are computed — PF, ESI, professional tax, income tax.
- The payroll journal posts to accounting salary expense, and each deduction as its own liability.
What Indian payroll has to get right
Indian statutory payroll is not a formula, it is a set of rules with thresholds, state variation and forms. The honest checklist when evaluating a product is this.
| Item | What to check |
|---|---|
| Provident fund | Employee and employer contributions at the current statutory rate, with the wage ceiling handled |
| ESI | Applied to employees under the wage threshold, with both contributions |
| Professional tax | Varies by state; check the states you actually operate in |
| Income tax / TDS | Declarations, proofs, and monthly deduction against projected annual liability |
| Filing outputs | ECR for PF, 24Q for TDS, Form 16 — ask to see one generated, not described |
| Disbursement control | Who can approve a payroll run, and whether one person can both prepare and release it |
Maker-checker, and why it belongs on payroll
Payroll is the single largest routine outflow in most businesses and the one an individual can most easily alter. A system where the person who prepares the run can also release the payment is a control weakness regardless of how much you trust that person.
Maker-checker means preparation and approval are separate rights held by different people, and the system enforces it rather than relying on an instruction. If you evaluate nothing else on the HR module, evaluate this.
Be specific about statutory filing outputs
This is where vendor answers get vague, so ask a specific question: not "do you support PF" but "show me the ECR file this generates". Computing a deduction correctly and producing the file the portal accepts are different pieces of work, and products vary.
To be straight about our own position: Unnati computes statutory deductions and runs payroll with maker-checker disbursement, but the statutory filing outputs — ECR, Form 16, 24Q — are on our roadmap rather than in the product today. If those outputs are the reason you are buying, Zoho Payroll and Odoo both document them and you should look there first.
In short
- The value is the unbroken chain from check-in to ledger with no re-entry.
- Verify PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS against the states you actually operate in.
- Ask to see a filing output generated, not described — computing and filing are different work.
- Maker-checker on disbursement is the control that matters most.